


Angel in the Shadow (Dark Angel or Guardian Devil)

by Aaronna



Category: Original Work
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Forced Slavery, Kahkisha doesn't know when to die, Murder, Possible Angel, Possible Banshee, Possible Demon, Roman Catholic Church, What she is is up to interpretation, Witch's trial, attempted drowning, burning at the stake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 03:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16966977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronna/pseuds/Aaronna
Summary: Brother John Peter is put in charge of taking the soon to be executed witch's last confession. By the end, he is not sure that she is a witch at all.





	Angel in the Shadow (Dark Angel or Guardian Devil)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this of a composition class back in 2012. I had to tame down the descriptions because they were disturbing to the professor. I might go back as flesh this out more in the future, but decided to post it as is for now.   
> I do plan on writing a whole story based others' interactions with Kahkisha throughout her life, but I am not sure when it will happen.

> The following tale is an account of the burning of the Witch known as Kahkisha by Brother John Peter, a scribe of the Roman Church.
> 
> The age of the woman is unknown. The closest guess to her age when she first encountered Europeans is between five and twelve years. This estimation is based on size and weight listed of illegal importation records.  The woman was a freeborn child who was instated into slavery at a very young age. Her birth name is unknown, as is her age and native dialect. 
> 
> Be forewarned. This tale has few pleasant parts, for her life was one of horrors, pain, and suffering.
> 
> ~ The Chronicler

* * *

  
My Brothers are dead as are the soldiers who worked for the Egyptian government and the Church. All that are left are the slaves who were enslaved here and I. This came to be at the hand of Kahkisha, a Dark and Holy Angel of the Lord. How could such a thing come to be? This she had told me not but a day ago.

* * *

>   
> The following is the account of the life of a dark-skinned woman, known as Kahkisha, condemned to be burned as a witch. As told to Brother John Peter, a scribe of the Roman Catholic Church, by the convicted. This text has been translated from the vulgar tongue of the Africans.

* * *

  
You may be wondering how I got to be a witch. That is the simplest part of my tale. Greed is the reason I am here, soon to die on foreign land. The greed was not my own, but that of the “pale men.” It was because of their greed that I am the only survivor of my tribe. I am not of Africa, but of Terra Australis Incognita, as you pale Europeans call it.

  
I was a small child of few years when the pale men came to my tribe. The men of my tribe went to greet them and were killed right before our eyes. We, the women and children, let out a mournful cry. The women were then killed. All that was left were us children.

* * *

  
“In what way were your people killed?” I asked with a little anger in my voice.

  
“They had their throats slit. And no, the men did not have their way with our mothers and aunts before or after killing them.” She answered with a slight smile that showed me that she knew what I had been thinking.

  
“Let us continue your tale, my child,” I said as I set my quill to parchment.

* * *

  
We were shoved into a small dark wagon that smelt of dirty bodies and death. Two days after the massacre, the men gave us some food and water, but only enough for all to have little more than a mouthful. This happened again and again until we reached a great lake of bad water that seemed to have no end. By then, seven of my friends had died, leaving but fourteen of us children alive.

  
On the edge of this great water, we were stripped of clothing and washed. We were each given a rough sack with three holes cut from it. These sacks were to be our new clothes. These new clothes were bug-ridden, and these pests only got worse as time went by.

  
After we were dressed, the men placed us in a wagon that went over water. In this wagon, we were put in a room with many more children from, I think, my neighboring tribes. It took more than a season to cross this salty lake.

  
By the time we were taken from the water wagon, there were only thirteen children alive, only three of us from of my tribe. The bugs in the clothing gave many a sickness, others died of little water and food, and many died because of both.

  
The new land we now found ourselves in was filled with pale men and men of brown skin. This place had trees that seemed to touch the sky and large gray beasts with long noses and large ears. In this land, four more of us left for the world of dreams.

  
Over the next two seasons, we were shoved in and out of boxes, crates, and wagons as well as drug along behind beasts of all sorts. Slowly, our number dwindled to six. Other than me, there were none left of my tribe. I was the last of my people.

  
It took over four seasons for these pale men to get me from my homeland to the place that they chose to be my new home - Africa. This place was much like where I came from, yet the land was not at all the same. This land's earth was not firm beneath my feet. Instead, it seemed to move and shift like mud, yet it was dry. The smell of the air was different too. The heat, sun, and breeze were all that made this place feel like home.

  
This new home was filled with dark brown people who worked in the sun, and pale men who lurked in the shade. All these peoples stared at us and whispered quietly. They were talking about the color of our skin, which they said was “darker than a shadow at night.” This I did not know until I learned their tongue several years later. I had been given to a brown family along with two other “shadows.” By the time I was nearly a woman, I was no longer just the only one from my tribe; I now was the only one left from my homeland. Even the people in the family I had lived with were now dead. I was quiet; I learned by listening and seeing. When the last member of the family died, I was alone in a crowded camp.

  
We with dark skin were the ones who made the salt beds, raked them, sacked the salt, and loaded the sacks into the wagons. We worked from dawn until there was no more light. We were fed twice a day: before daybreak and after dark had settled. Water was only given out during the hottest parts of the day, usually right after the pale men ate their third meal.

  
After I came upon womanhood, men tried to make use of it. One evening the slave's speaker, a dark man that spoke the tongue of the pale men -Europeans as they called themselves- took me to show me how womanhood and manhood go hand in hand. He ripped my clothing trying to rid me of it. That is when I made him no longer able to father a child. As he screamed, I ran. I ran faster than the wind and just as quiet.

  
I ran until dawn and as the sun's rising light shown in my eyes. It blinded me for a moment. That moment was more than enough, for, in that short time, I had run to the edge of a shallow cliff. As my vision cleared, I stepped one step too far and I fell. Both my legs snapped as the land and I met. As always, I made no sound. I tried setting my own legs, but as I tried to set the first one, my pain made me sleep. I woke in great pain and saw him, the man whose fault I was here. He stood at the top of the chasm and looked at my broken form. He must have thought I was dead or soon would be because he left me there.

* * *

  
“He just left you there?!” I nearly shouted. I was almost livid with rage that, as a priest of the Church, I should not have felt.

  
“He thought I was dead, but if I was alive, and he helped me, that he would be treated a dog by the slavers. So he left me there.” She stated this as a fact and did not appear to be upset at all.

  
“Tell me, how did you survive without help, without water?” I asked, barely keeping my anger controlled.

* * *

  
To this day, I know not how long I pulled myself along, I knew simply that the pain I felt would pale in comparison to what I would inflict on those who killed my people, my family, and left me to die on strange soil. I was found many miles from the salt flats where I had been bullied, beaten, whipped, and starved for most of my life. I was half-naked, half-dead, half-healed, as well as half-mad.

  
The old man who found me was a dark man who had seen no sun in a very long time. He was a medicine man, and he is the only reason I did not lose myself to the madness I felt. He had to re-break my legs to set them right. This I took silently, which greatly puzzled the healer. “She is either very strong willed or not truly human.” He knew not if I was human or demon, for when I spoke in a feverish bout, it was not a tongue of Africa I spoke with but that of my homeland.

  
It took me almost a year to fully recover. I was not the kind of patient that would stay lying in a bed while healing. I would get out of bed because of dreams, dreams of the death of my people, of the man who tried to take my womanhood for his amusement, and of what would soon come of them when I was yet again whole. Because of this, my legs healed very slowly, and yet they grew in length until I had a height taller than most men by a head and a half. I had always been thin for lack of food, but now the healer fed me meat and green paste, he said it would help my bones. I remained slender, but now I was strong as well.

  
I left the house of the medicine man almost a year after I was recovered. I learned how to heal, but at the same time, I learned how to hurt and kill without taking much time at all. I used this knowledge to kill any slaver I came across. Over time, I found that I enjoyed killing and decided to make it even more fun. I decided that fear would be a good start, and that is when I found the banshee. The banshee was what almost all the Europeans feared, and so I became The Caller of Death. As the banshee, I killed slavers and freed their slaves.

* * *

  
“How did you become the banshee, my child?” I asked the woman.

  
“I have ebony skin, onyx eyes that taint the white around them to brown, and raven hair. All I had to do was wear a gown of white and sing in my true tongue. They were alike to sheep when a wild dog howls, running about and not watching where they stepped,” she replied, with a slight sneer.

  
“Where they stepped, Child? In what ways did you harm them?” I wondered aloud.

  
“All I did was lay poisoned cattle tropes just beyond the light of their fire, loose the horses, and sing a song for my dead people. They did the rest.” She stated this as if she was speaking of children.

* * *

  
One night, I went back to the salt flats that had been my life for over ten years. That night I lost myself to the banshee. We were one, and I felt whole for the first time since the massacre of my people. I sang for the souls of my people, those of the slaves who died, even for those who I would soon send to the dream world. As I sang, I let loose all the pain that I had ever felt, and it mixed with my song and led my past oppressors to their doom. I did this to many slave encampments over the next several years until the day I was caught by the soldiers of Rome.

  
The rest of my story you know, Holy One. How I killed many here in Egypt: the man who chained me to a stone, the one who tried to push me into the pool, and the other six it took for to push me and the stone in the pool. I was sinking down, and then I thought of all the people who I had loved that died. I turned out to be a better swimmer than any of us thought. I swam back to the surface where I was relieved of the stone and taken to the Bishop. The Bishop named me a Witch because I had made it back to the surface. That, Holy One, is my story. Please come to my burning and finish the rest of my story. Do not let me die alone, but instead come. Let me die with a man who understands why I did what I did and who I am.

* * *

>   
> The following is the account of the burning of a Witch at the Roman Catholic Church in Alexandria, Egypt. The following was written by Brother John Peter a scribe formerly of the Roman Church.

* * *

  
As I was asked, I attended the execution of the so-called witch. I was to be the Holy Scribe of the Church, whose job it was to document her death. This weighed greatly on my soul, which at that moment I knew not why.

  
She was brought before the Bishop to be told of her fate, yet she already knew it. They then took her to the central courtyard where the stake stood waiting to be burned with her. When she saw me, she smiled. Her teeth shown like moonlight beside her lips of midnight. I realized she had no fear of death, and this was not her final chapter.

  
The soldiers of the Church tied the condemned to the stake on the stand that was to hold the fire in which she was to perish. Her smile grew as they placed the wood and reeds around her. As the Brothers of the Church prayed for her soul, the fire was lit. As the fire grew, her body burned. Ash gathered on her body forming what seemed to be a pale gown. She made no sound as her body turned to dust, not even a cough.

  
The ashes truly formed a gown of flowing cloth, and as her old body crumbled, it formed a new. She then stepped out of the flames in that glorious gown and sang for the forgiveness of the souls of those soon to die for they knew not what they did. The song was saddening yet sweet to me and the slaves, but to the rest, it appeared to be quite painful. The song was not of any tongue I have ever heard.

  
The sky that had moments ago been clear was now filled with fire and brimstone. Those who felt pain from the song were taken for this world by this flame. And then suddenly, it ceased. The fire was replaced with rain, and with it, the fires were extinguished.

  
And lo! There she stood, an Angel by any means. She was truly a sight to behold in her gown of purity that was born of fire resting on her shoulders in the portrait of modesty. She then spoke a single word, and I knew what I must do. That word was

  
“BEHOLD!”

* * *

 

>   
> Brother John Peter left the Roman Catholic Church and went to Australia where he told the story of the Dark Angel and how she had lived even after her death. He spent the rest on his days with the people of the Great Southern Land speaking in a tongue that all understood. This language was only heard from those who had survived being at an execution of a witch in Alexandria, Egypt, many years before. These men and women were able to help Aborigines, Africans, and Europeans alike with this ability. To those people, one’s soul was what was important, not one’s skin color.
> 
> ~ The Chronicler


End file.
